How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies by Robert Dale Parker

How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies Reviews

• 
  Jerrica

  If you wanna interpret literature but don't like verbose esoteric theory essays and all that shit this book's 4 u bb
• 
  John Pistelli

  This is a primer for undergraduates on the major schools of modern literary theory. Its survey is as follows, in order of their appearance in the book, which Parker cleverly arranges according to the chronological order of their impact in American English departments:
  
  • New Criticism
  • structuralism
  • deconstruction
  • psychoanalysis
  • feminism
  • queer theory
  • Marxism
  • New Historicism and cultural studies
  • postcolonial and race studies
  • reader-response theory
  • disability studies and eco-criticism
  
  (I read and taught from all but the last two chapters.)
  
  Parker is very good at both introducing these theories in logically ordered ways, and he also explains difficult concepts in plain language without detracting from their actual complexity. He is disarmingly frank, explaining to readers why most of the theories studied will be secular and leftist, but also fair and judicious—he goes out of his way, for instance, not to repeat the usual myths about New Criticism that provided two generations of post-structuralists with simplistic straw-man arguments, and yet he also brings the needed political critique to New Criticism as well. His examples of how to “apply” the various critical schools to individual texts are clearly explained, and his classroom anecdotes make the work of interpretation feel situated and even dramatic.
  
  Now for some complaints. I do find Parker’s prose style fairly condescending. He has the wry tone of a middle-school teacher trying to cajole the class into settling down, except for those moments when his voice lowers and he imparts a serious lesson—in this book, almost always a lesson in the language and affect of identity politics. These lessons—such as his claim that feminism means nothing less or more than “taking women seriously and respectfully”—tend to make the various critical theories seem much less radical than they in fact are. Most feminist literary theory is about abolishing the patriarchy, considered as an exploitative class relation upheld by material structures. But Parker never quite puts things so bluntly, for fear, I suppose, of scaring away the students. I completely understand that fear, but, still, the students should not be misled. Reading this book makes one understand how what is called political correctness is not only not a form of radicalism, but a de-radicalizing. Sometimes, Parker is so conciliatory to all parties that he almost strikes the tone of one making a speech to the U.N. or some such body:

  Indeed, French feminism, Anglo-American feminism, and the rest of the world’s feminism have long since moved beyond that unfortunate binary opposition that has for some years seemed to oversimplify feminism into French feminism versus Anglo-American feminism, when actually, of course, feminists of all stripes learn from each other, and feminist thinkers come from every race and class and from all over the world.

  I admire this evident desire to teach the world to sing, but all I can say is, “Tell it to Twitter!”
  
  Also, there are a lot of pop culture examples in this book. These are no doubt meant as a concession to the democracy of popular entertainment, but are they really all that democratic? For better or worse, high school and college curricula have developed a modified and diversified “canon” of Anglophone works, running, more or less, from Beowulf to Beloved, with a few non-Anglophone additions (e.g., Homer and the Russian novelists). In my experience, English majors are familiar with this canon, whereas not all of them are familiar with science fiction films or rap music or detective fiction or "bromantic" comedies. Popular culture, despite its presumptuous label, addresses itself more to niche markets than to the populace at large. For this reason, I think—perhaps unfashionably—that Heart of Darkness belongs in the place occupied in this book by Avatar, namely, as an exemplum of the colonial text. Unless I am mistaken, Avatar was greeted as epochal upon its release, and is not much mentioned now except as a punchline, whereas it seems as if we will be arguing over whether or not Conrad was a bloody racist for at least another hundred years.
  
  Finally, once this book gets to political and identitarian critique in Chapter 6, it never leaves them. You would not know from this book about the changes in literary theory in the last fifteen to twenty years, and I wonder if Parker does not mention them precisely because they call much of the previous politicized (and identity politicized) critique into question. There is no mention in this book of Deleuze and affect theory, of neuroscientific or evolutionary approaches to criticism, of various new materialisms (feminist, queer, and otherwise) focusing more on bodies than texts, of new formalism and new aestheticism, of new (philosophical) realisms and object-oriented theories, of post-secularism, or even really of the revivified and belligerently universalist Marxism of which Zizek was and is the figurehead. This book ends, intellectually, in about the year 2000, which makes it somewhat incomplete, from my perspective.
  
  Nevertheless, this book’s genial tone and clear explanations of such recondite ideas as those of Saussure, Derrida, Lacan, Sedgwick, Spivak and others, and such complicated concepts as the waves of feminism or the homosocial continuum, make it ideal for introductory courses in criticism and theory.
• 
  Katie Quinn

  I read this for a critical theory class in my English MA program and I really enjoyed it. Parker makes each of the "more prominent" theories (feminism, queer studies, marxism, etc.) much more accessible while offering a substantial amount of supplemental reading suggestions per chapter. He also takes each theory and applies various examples of that theory to real life, literature, modern movies, and so much more. It really helped me understand so many concepts that are otherwise very difficult and abstract.
• 
  Sam Alexander

  Don't let the silly title keep you away. Best primer on lit theory I've found.
• 
  Rebecca

  This book's simple and chatty prose will make it easy for students as a basic primer, and it does a good job explaining new criticism and structuralism. However, it does include some of the most annoying mistakes that contemporary literary critics make when writing about social theories that have their origins outside the study of literature. For example, Parker attributes the understanding that race is socially constructed to deconstruction and post-structuralism (instead of social science) equates new historicism with Marxism, and in that discussion argues that until the light of deconstruction, historians portrayed the past as a story of consensus through the ages (as if there were no historians prior to the 1960s who understood that history involved story of conflict and change) . He also equates "queer" with "gay and lesbian" studies, seeming to reduce queer studies to a kind of identity politics at times. However, this chapter does include mentions of Chandan Reddy and Siobhan Somerville, so it is more up-to-date than other texts. If I were teaching a course introducing literary criticism to undergraduates, I might assign a few chapters, but probably not the whole book.
• 
  Nils Jepson

  agh going to be keeping this book next to me for the rest of my life, hopefully. sometimes i wonder if I'm a sucker for survey materials compared to the actual source. I've read more about Marx, more people building off of or summarizing Marx, for example, than Marx himself. maybe this is okay -- ideas evolve and reading ideas through a lens of today's priorities is probably more productive than wading through Hegel or Descartes or something. but still, i feel like I'm somewhat betraying both the writer and myself for only reading about them, and not from them.
  
  But, then, books come along like this, so engaging and productive and grounded that it's hard for me not to throw the volumes of dense theory out of the window! this is such a good book, way better than i expected. i bought it because in the last few years of school i really started to engage with literary theory but felt like i left too early to learn about it in its entirety. i got snapshots here and there; Marx, brecht, althusser, butler, Sedgwick, etc. but these names kind of existed in a mind vacuum. they were all separate and i wasn't really dedicated enough to fully make the connections between each, even if i knew they had to be there.
  
  "how to interpret literature" helped with that, all while proving the necessity of literary theory. this book, and the theories it discusses, exist despite of current English department trends, moving more towards "how to write grant applications" and "how to write copy for a tv ad" and less towards the New Critics or structuralism or queer studies. parker, however, shuts the power of the vacuum off and proves how essential theory really is to understanding the everyday. he didn't even have to; the book would have been a joy and a clear-cut knowledge dumb even without him going the next step and proving why theory matters and why theory is political.
  
  in some ways, this message makes "how to interpret literature" jump beyond the average textbook. parker uses a bunch of the different approaches to rail, wholly, against "essentialism" or the belief that someone is biologically or innately inflexible and set compared to constantly evolving, shifting, contradictory. essentialism seems ridiculous in writing but it pervades a lot of our discourse, especially when it comes to how we approach talking about culture and race and politics. parker, instead, takes a sociological approach; people are complex, individuals don't often make a whole lot of sense, but this doesn't make studying folks and their literature an any less worthwhile endeavor. in fact, these complexities are what, surprisingly, bring so much joy to this book. parker loves people and he never gets caught up in what I've sometimes seen as concepts that inevitably dehumanize folks in their effort to understand and simplify them. parker engages with literary theory because he sees it as something that enlivens the world around us because literature, in its wide-scale definition encompassing film and tweets and notes and annotations and text messages and reality shows, in its very existence, is joy. that's what made this book so accessible to me. i found joy, in every dept in undergrad, sincerely lacking. reason prevailed. parker doesn't advocate abandoning reason but instead notes that good theory combines the best of both; in its reasonable deduction, theory scrapes away at the bullshit and starts to reveal hints of you and me and the fabric that creates the ground we stand on and the house we live in. good theory, and approaching theory open-mindedly, isn't easy (especially in practice which we luckily don't have to do here) but it's important because it decries the simplification of any one person or group and instead sees the world as multiple -- containing multiple meanings, theses, characters, and reveals. good theory expands, doesn't enclose. i left this book feeling like the world was less understandable, but also a bit more special than when i entered it.
• 
  fer

  a good intro to stuff, but you might need to look for more reference texts to fully understand all of it. sometimes the language is a bit inaccessible to people who are still learning academic-speak. required read for my BA in Lit.
• 
  Jeddie

  Read this for my literary criticism class, and the academic parts of the text are solid. The thing that made me hate our weekly readings, though, is how it’s palpable how much this man is putting on a “woke” front. He goes out of his way to tell you that he’s a feminist, an anti-racist, and a queer ally, but then turns around and uses the d*ke slur, undermines the majority of feminist critical theory, and basically implies that there was no homophobia before the Victorian period (???) and that people making their sexuality a personality trait ruined same-sex friendships. He also said that it was wrong for people to see queer subtext in films like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid because it’s not there (apparently because they sleep with women. Does bisexuality not exist?), and men should just be allowed to be friends??? Who said that they couldn’t, and who hurt this man to make him write such thinly veiled homophobia?
• 
  Shelby Rollenhagen

  Any book of this variety is bound to have both pros and cons. Parker does provide an introductory approach to critical theory, but how well that theory is explained varies drastically. He tries to keep the book very accessable to someone with very limited experience, but in turn often comes off rather condescending. Some theories are presented much more clearly than others.
  The biggest flaw in this book is that it doesn't really seem to teach how to apply the theory. It does more to demonstrate a recognition of when the theory is being applied.
  Still, the book is worth reading. It is a good starting point on the subject. There are also suggested readings at the end of each chapter/presentation of a specific theory.
• 
  Mustafa Bilal

  Parker's approach is comprehensive and friendly. He tries to connect various approaches with their practical implications. It is a good introduction to critical theory.
• 
  Valerie

  So excited to teach from this in the future. Great beginning theory text!
• 
  Kelly W.

  When I was a first-year grad student taking my first every critical theory class, this book (then in its second edition) was a life-saver for navigating the various primary sources I was assigned. I had a very hard time making sense of some of the dense writing of Derrida, Bhabha, and others, and Parker’s book helped me to understand the basic concepts of each critical discipline.
  
  My critique of this edition is that ecocriticism and disability studies share a chapter. For me, the two are very distinct and have a lot of material, and I would have especially liked to see disability studies get its own section with enough room to explore concepts (on the same level as feminism, postcolonial/race studies, and queer studies). I also think ecocriticism can have its own section, especially in light of the current climate crisis. Not that the current chapter doesn't explore these approaches (it does), but there's something off-putting to me about lumping the "newer" approaches together.
  
  But other than that, I find Parker’s writing and organization very clear with many examples to show how critical theory works in practice. While I wouldn’t recommend this book if you have a casual interest in literary theory, I do think this book is helpful for those, like me, who struggle to understand primary texts and the loose boundaries of each critical approach.
• 
  Marwa Mohammad

  I had to read that book for a literature class. Although I skipped some parts for the sake of finishing it before the final exam, it did not affect my whole understanding of it. I really liked the book. It's a good introduction for those who are interested in critical theories and would like to pursue such topics for an M.A or Ph.D. degrees. The language is quite simple and there are examples and applications of each and every theory.
  
  Basically, this book changed my way of looking and thinking about many things around me. It enables me to analyze movies, advertisements, politics, or even social behaviors in a more critical way.Such ideas might be taken for granted. At the end of the book, Parker points out that " One goal of this book is to encourage our dialogue about, how, as readers, we can respond to less passively and more critically." [286] He also elaborates what he hopes the readers will get out from this book by saying " It can make the study of literature more concrete because critical theory is about the connections between literature and our everyday lives. Critical theory makes literary study more relevant to our lives not less relevant"
  
  I highly recommend reading it.
• 
  Lilly

  The textbook paired with my spring 2017 intro to English studies course. In class we would read sections of chapters (like Marxism and Feminism) and I would finish chapters later (or, as with the queer studies chapter, read before assigned).
  
  On my own, I read the chapters for Structuralism, Deconstruction, New Historicism, Colonialism and Race Studies, and Eco-Criticism and Disability studies. The first two of those definitely took a while (with many new terms to remember), but we brushed on them frequently during the semester. It would have taken much more time, since we already had our hands full with a broad introduction to all the different methods and lenses applied to interpretation.
  
  I will certainly be reviewing this book's chapters for help in the future, especially the more abstract methods (structuralism and deconstruction, new historicism, reader response). This is a very helpful read that explains and exemplifies the many ways of looking at or using each mode of criticism introduced.
• 
  Tyler Jenkins

  I don’t usually review the textbooks I read in class but I also don’t usually read the entire textbook so I’m counting this towards my goal. What a great book though, I’d say a must read for anyone looking to write novels, write screenplays, interested in examining the shows/movies they watch or the books they read. Amazing theory explained expertly and simply as possible without making the reader feel dumb or belittled. Using the theory in this book to write my first big ten page paper about something I love deeply... Marvel. Using Lacan’s theory of The Real presented in this book to analyze the character Wanda Maximoff in this show WandaVision and the MCU as a whole. Amazing book to help you get started on the theories that will infect your head every time you read or watch something from now on!
• 
  Simon Stegall

  A good intro to critical theories like Poststructuralism, Marxism, and contemporary race and gender studies. As Parker openly states in the intro to this textbook, the majority of the approaches and critical theories described here (with the exception of Marxism) skew left, which may put off right-leaning readers. (Notably absent from this account are influential critics of the right like Frye and Jung.) Nonetheless, Parker fairly and clearly describes the dominant critical approaches for what they are. As such, this is a valuable overview of modern literary criticism, if not a comprehensive one.
• 
  Rome

  This book provides a dense introduction to lit theory while maintaining the interest of the reader. It alludes to both contemporary exemplifications of its assertions and novels the reader will have likely studied in prior courses or at least heard the major ideas of. It was far easier to read than the huge book of essays by philosophers I’m doing for lit theory so thank you for giving me a nice foundation for that friends.
• 
  Carl

  Parker provides a good introduction to literary criticism. Though, some chapters, particularly the chapter on Marxism, focus more on political philosophy and history rather than its application to literature. He also conflates Deconstruction and Poststructuralism, which, though the two share some ideas, is confusing as the two are different. Regardless, this book is a good introduction.
• 
  Helena

  veldig gode samandrag av fleire av dei viktigaste retningane innan litteraturteori. Om du vil forstå utan å nødvendigvis lese primærtekstane, eller berre treng ei oppfrisking, kan du lese denne. Vart sjukt lei av den til slutt, sidan eg har hatt eit maraton dei siste dagane, men som sagt eigentleg ganske bra til sitt formål
• 
  Jaclyn

  Great introduction on various critical theories. I liked the author's casual, conversational tone. It made everything easier to take in. I think he did a great job explaining every theory and this is one textbook I'm going to actually hold on to for future references.
• 
  Sadie Chelsea

  The writing can be, sometimes, too technical and scientifically long, but overall a great and thorough book. Helped a lot in understanding various kinds of literary criticism techniques, theories, and studies.
• 
  Meg

  Read this for a class - it’s very conceptual if that’s what you’re interested in. Some chapters to me made more sense than others. It covered a lot of theories that I hadn’t seen covered before in other works.
• 
  Sabrina

  A very helpful and easy to read breakdown of all the major fields of literary criticism and theory. The chapters assigned throughout my Lit Theory class this semester have honestly been life-savers.
• 
  Rebecca Walsh

  gugh so boring but probably necessary if I am to be an English major.
• 
  Sarah

  Bold of you to assume reality exists.
• 
  Jenny Lee

  Really informative read about the different critical theories for literature and cultural studies. Read for a college class.